She Might As Well Call It Fight Club (If Only She Would Fight)
by shippershape
Summary: Post 2x08. Clarke is not handling Finn's death well. She's beating herself up, actually she has someone else to that for her now, and Bellamy has had enough.


Clarke asks a member of the guard to teach her how to fight. His name is Randall, and he's twenty-five, and he has some deep-seated anger issues that he takes out on Clarke. She doesn't seem to mind, hell, Bellamy suspects that's the reason she picked him to begin with.

It's not so much combat training as it is thirty minutes a day that Clarke has her ass handed to her. She's bruised on every inch of skin that Bellamy can see, a medley of colour as old bruises fade into the new. She's punishing herself.

Abby hates it, but she can't do anything about it, not really, because Clarke has always been her own person and since Finn's death she's become something feral and unfamiliar. Bellamy hates it, swears he can feel the marks on his own skin when he sees them on hers. He wants to kill Randall, but Clarke would just find someone else, Raven maybe, and that sparring match would end in blood. It's an irony that she calls them combat lessons because he's never seen her fight back so pitifully, these hours are a self-inflicted purgatory, and this whole thing is such a crock he almost wants to laugh. She might as well call it fight club. He wonders if she feels anything anymore, if she's as bruised inside as she is out, or if she's just numb.

Today's training is no different. Miller tries to convince him not to watch, just like he always does, but Bellamy doesn't trust Randall not to do permanent damage. So he leans against a tree and feels every blow as they hit her, and he wonders if this will ever end. He knows now, why in movies they always skip to six months after a character death when the healing has begun. These past few months have been messy, and dark, and Clarke is so far from herself that Bellamy doesn't even know if she's still in there. She is. He believes that, because he has to.

But sometimes he wonders.

The camp hasn't gotten together and mourned Finn, throwing flowers on the ground and sharing stories about the things that spacewalker got right in his life. They don't talk about Finn. They don't talk at all. Raven hates Clarke, and Clarke hates Clarke, and Bellamy hates the way Clarke is currently swaying where she stands, too dazed to dodge the fists that are coming her way. She drops, and then Bellamy's there beside her, hands on her face.

"That's enough." He says, glancing over his shoulder at Randall. "You're done." Randall frowns, but nods, and retreats back to the central hub of Camp Jaha. Bellamy pulls Clarke into his arms, waiting. Her eyes are open, but there's no one in there, and Bellamy suddenly misses her in a way that hollows him out completely. Her eyes flicker, and then she's back, not in the way he needs her, but in the only way she ever is these days.

"Hey." She says. He tries to smile, but it comes out more like a grimace.

"Hi." Slowly, she sits up, and Bellamy helps her to her feet.

"I guess I'm still not very good at this." She jokes. He doesn't laugh.

"This has got to stop." He says. It's true. He can't watch this anymore. None of them can. It hurts him and it hurts her friends and it hurts Abby. Mostly he only cares that it's hurting Clarke but he knows that she's getting exactly what she wants out of this arrangement. She blinks at him.

"I'll get better…"

"You won't." He says firmly. "You don't want to. This isn't training, Clarke, it's penance, and it has got to stop." She pulls out of his grip, still unsteady on her feet. He lets his hands fall uselessly to his sides. She won't let him help her now.

"That's not true, I-"

"Clarke." He just means to tell her she doesn't have to lie, that he gets it, that he knows what it's like to hate yourself to the point that every single blow feels like an exorcism. Instead, her name falls from his lips, a broken sound that he usually only makes at night, when the nightmares and ghosts and worry leave him sweating. Her eyes soften, a little. A ghost of the warmth that he used to find there.

"I'm okay." She assures him. He snorts.

"Yeah." Bellamy thinks of the way Abby can't even look at Clarke anymore, not because of what she did to Finn, but because the black eyes and the broken nose and the bleeding lips are too much to take. He's stronger, for now, but he knows soon he won't be able to do it anymore either. He grabs Clarke's wrist, flips it upwards so the bruises and the swelling from where Randall nearly broke it the day before are visible. His fingers brush across the blue and yellow of her forearm, over the swelling on her lip. "Clearly." He lets his hands fall away, trying to force down the bile in his throat. He steps back. He needs some space.

"Of course." Clarke spits behind him as he turns, heads for the trees. "Walk away, Bellamy. When I need you, you bail. Just like everyone else." Bellamy stops, turns.

"You need me?" He asks incredulously. "For what? To watch you hate yourself? To watch you get turned inside out every day by some guy who's three times your size? To step in every time you almost die because you're too self-loathing to tap out when there are hands around your neck and blood in your ears?" He's walked back over to her, towering over her as it all comes spewing out. He hates her, _hates_ her, for what she's done to him and what she's done to herself. But he loves her too. He loves her in a way that breaks him fresh every morning and rubs the raw pieces of his heart together until it hurts to breathe. He loves her. And he hates her. And he is tired, _tired_ of this.

"I never asked you to do that!" She shouts, something other than apathy sparking behind her eyes. For the first time in a long time he feels hope.

"I told you I needed you!" He shouts back. It feels good to shout, to hear her shout. At least he knows for once she's actually feeling something. "I need you and you're dying here, Clarke, you are dying right in front of me and I can't do this anymore." His voice breaks, and he doesn't usually cry, not in public, not in the daylight, but he can feel the ache in the back of his throat and he knows it won't take much to push him over the edge.

"You can't do this?" She asks, voice as raw as his. "What about me?"

"You can't do this anymore, either." He says, shaking his head. "You're going to kill yourself one of these days. People are hurting around here, Clarke, people who are not you. I know you hate yourself, and I know the guilt is eating you alive, and I know you won't let yourself hear anything that might justify what you've done, but you have got to get past this."

"I can't-"

"You can." Clarke's crying now, fat tears and big gulps and it's the most beautiful sound he has ever heard simply because it's not silence. "You have to. I'm telling you, right now, that you are just going to have to move past this." He doesn't tell her that she saved Finn from a lot of unnecessary suffering or that she saved this camp from a war they could not afford or that even Lexa admired her bravery. She knows these things, deep down. She stumbles forward, into his arms, and her whole body shakes as she cries. He holds her tightly enough to ensure that neither of them will come apart at the seams, and rests his chin on the top of her head.

"I hate you." She sobs into his shirt.

"No, you don't." He tells her.

"Okay." She says, voice cracking as a fresh wave of sobs wrack her body. He groans. Tightens his grip around her until they can both barely breathe but it's better, it's safer this way.

"No more fight club." He says. She nods into his chest and he lets out a sigh of relief. "You're going to be okay." He murmurs, and he remembers the last time he told her that, the day she tried to sneak Finn out of the camp, the day she killed him. Everything had changed since then, but one thing had not. She was going to be okay.


End file.
